Friday, September 27, 2013

Entering its fourth season, RAISING HOPE, is the critically acclaimed comedy from Emmy award winner Greg Garcia ("My Name is Earl") that follows the continuing adventures of the Chance family as they raise an adorable toddler named Hope. In the episode above, a cow at the petting zoo has bitten Hope and the butcher who runs it has given the family a huge supply of meat to prevent any lawsuit.

At 23, JIMMY (Lucas Neff) unexpectedly became a single parent (by unknowingly impregnating a serial killer) and now his life's goal is to be the world's best dad. Jimmy's parents VIRGINIA (Martha Plimpton) and BURT (Garret Dillahunt) who had Jimmy at the tender age of 15, don't mind being back in the baby game. They made mistakes with Jimmy, but now with their granddaughter, they finally have the opportunity to get everything right. The Chances live with Jimmy's erratic great-grandmother, MAW MAW (Cloris Leachman) whose eccentricities now force everyone to stay on their toes.

In this episode that we recently worked on, the Chances decide to clean out the fridge and hold an International Taco Night, which in their world consists of "French" fries, "Greek" yogurt, Chinese noodles and a myriad of other foods that have, of course, nothing to do with tacos, but everything to do with cleaning out the fridge!

In reality however, we have come up with the most delicious tostada using Fischer & Wieser Specialty Foods, Inc.'s salsa along with their Mango Ginger Habanero Sauce for a marinade for the chicken. When we were first contacted by the marketing department of Fischer and Wieser based on how much they liked our blog, we were asked to use their products in a recipe and add them to our blog if we were interested. We were so excited and the sauces were so delicious we used them multiple times during our shoots.

In our "Ironside" blog post we used the Mango Ginger Habanero Sauce and dribbled it over our fried chicken. It has just the right amount of mango and spice to give it the perfect kick.

For this post, we decided to use both the Mango Ginger Habanero Sauce to marinate the chicken breasts - which is really delicious - and then we used the Salsa a la Charra to top our tostadas.

So far, we have used Mom's Garlic & Basil Spaghetti Sauce on one of our shoots with pasta and it was very well received. We topped it with freshly grated parmigiano reggiano and fresh basil.

Raffle/Giveaway! We also loved The Original Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce® and served it with warm brie and crusty baguette slices topped with cilantro. The Smokehouse Bacon & Chipotle Grilling Sauce is to die for and we basted some racks of baby back ribs and chicken with it for another shoot and a party as well! Fischer and Wieser has generously offered a few of their products to us to raffle off in a giveaway with our loyal blog fans! Please feel free to enter the raffle below using your email or Facebook and a winner will be chosen on October 2nd. To enter, leave us a comment about what you would make with the Mango Ginger Habanero Sauce we used for our chicken and earn a chance to get an amazing assortment of sauces delivered right to your door! To get more information about Fischer and Wieser and their fabulous sauces please visit their website here.

a Rafflecopter giveawayBut wait... A post of ours just wouldn't be the same without some strange request in the food styling world. In this episode, MAW MAW needs to eat a napkin that she thinks is a taco. "Are these supposed to be hard or soft shell tacos?" To which Virginia replies, "That's a napkin Maw Maw." It was our task to come up with something to pick up that was edible and resembled a napkin but whose color needed to be either white or close in color to the yellow napkin. We experimented with real tortillas, cut them with scissors, and painted them with edible color. Next we experimented with edible paper (aka thin fondant sold in sheets). We mixed the color that matched the napkins and blotted it with a special cloth. After that, we let it dry and then turned it over to do the other side. We made 20 of each. Success! She ate the fondant yellow napkin. No complaints!

About Me

Wendy Blasdel has been creating on camera food for movies and television shows for 30 years. After 7 years in the world of high end restaurants in Hollywood, including Spago, Trumps, and Chinois; she tired of pulling cookie trays out of tall convection ovens and into her neck. While designing the presentation of desserts at Wolfgang Puck's Chinois in the open kitchen, she simultaneously discovered food styling after being asked for some Christmas puddings on The Thornbirds in the summer of 1983.
Since then, Wendy has amassed an enormous archive of credits that include Madmen, Trueblood, Frasier (14 years), Weeds, Law and Order, Gray's Anatomy, Cheers, Dynasty, and thousands of others.
Wendy is still at it today with her team of merry marauders, and is finally sharing some of her secrets, crazy stories, and tips that make up the life of a Hollywood food stylist.
Follow us and find out just how we make enormous caramel apples and martinis for Liz Taylor inThe Flintstones, bloody heart throbbing soufflees for Trueblood, and much more.